The 48-year-old woman was riding down an escalator into the Fabre Metro station, when the end of her scarf got caught in the motorized stairway.

"While she was trying to pull up her scarf from the escalator, her hair got caught too and from there, everything got tied up at the end of the escalators," said Const. Jean-Pierre Brabant of the Montreal police.

Eyewitnesses say other escalator riders tried to help her but although she was still breathing immediately after the accident, she was in cardiac arrest by the time paramedics arrived. She was pronounced dead on the scene.

A Société de transport de Montréal told reporters that all escalators in the station are up to code and that this was the first escalator fatality she could think of.

The accident is not, however, the first fatality involving a scarf. Famous dancer Isadora Duncan died in a very similar freak accident after her flowing scarf got tangled in the rear hubcap of the convertible she was driving in.